Just When

I was beginning to feel much better. I thought I was getting a handle
on the house problems. Yesterday morning I went out and ran errands.
The weather was nice, and I had few problems with the road
construction in Frisco. I really like Frisco. Everything is nice and
new. There is an absolutely amazing number of stores and shops in
Frisco. I went back to Home Depot and bought a six pack of the 3M
Filtrete filters for the HAC. I went to Sam's and bought a four pound
fruit salad bowl to take to the block party pot luck dinner.

Then I went to the block party at 5 PM. Pulte had a tent set up by the
sales center and model homes. One of the corporate sponsors was a
local Mayflower agent. They had one of the monster trucks in front of
the area where the tent was located. There was lots of food, but
unfortunately there were also lots of flies that soon were all over
the food. Saturday turned out to be very warm. I sat down at a table
next to a lady and her husband whose home is still under construction.
I thought the block party was going to be just for the Phase 1 people
who had already moved in, but that must have changed because many of
the people were still in the construction phase.

Of course, the conversation centered around our new homes. The people
I talked with are very dissatisfied with how the home construction is
being handled. I began to feel like my problems are very minor
compared to what others are experiencing. The people I was talking to
for the most part live in the Dallas area and are watching the process
closely as the homes are being built. Since I was three hundred miles
away while my house was being built I was not able to watch every
detail and fret over every mistake, but it makes me wonder what is
lurking behind my walls.

Then the corporate sponsors were introduced. The Mayflower people were
having a drawing for $500 worth of their moving services. Ha! Ha! Ha!.
I could not resist the opportunity to vent my wrath at Mayflower. Of
course, the local Dallas group said they do not deal with Wald
Mayflower from Houston. The man gave me his card and said to email him
about my problems and he would see if he could get Wald to send me the
claim form.

The other corporate sponsor was UBS financial services. The wine and
cheese socials are sponsored by Merrill Lynch. Where there are old
people with retirement savings the financial vultures hover close by.

I intended to get some dessert when I went back to the table, but the
lady sitting next to me cautioned me not to eat any more because the
flies had covered the food. People started leaving. I went home and
microwaved an apple turnover that I had in the freezer.

This afternoon the associate producer from CNN.com is going to
interview me by phone for an article they are preparing for CNN.com.
The topic is going to be how people react to retirement. The article
should appear sometime during the week on CNN.com.